Jars

It comes back in angles you can't quite trust.
Fire truck; reprehensible; catastrophe;
The words are just words right?
and not really our relationship.
Or what you really meant when you read those poems
in that way
(far too tight).
We are not comprised of empty ricochets
or words
whispered across a wide-based library staircase.
I didn't mean to call you out
as echo
when your body left the room

but when your body left the room
My mouth chased the ricochets into the newly empty places
I breathed ghosts into your footprints
and gave in to the limbo encroaching on the other side of the bed.

Our communications are more than just a forgotten turn
signal
stretched out in a lulling down turned position
click
click.
No. We're not like that at all.

We are buzzing erratic
a clock whose schizoid cuckoo
has both claustrophobia
and performance anxiety,
fidgety hands that think too much
and a yellowing face that melts much faster than any mustache could possibly imagine.

But now that your body has left the room
I am catching the ricochet in jars.
Without your blonde body to balance it out
the echoes begin building into a downhill prediction
and I should screw them down before they leave me too.
Jars are good for keeping things in.

When keeping hope to a minimum you must
make sure you've twisted their mouths watertight
like the words you read too close together
(or maybe meant to be run all together
like some of your favorite German words)
echoes need a tensioned seal.
If you put a poem in a jar it stays fresh
and wet with unwhispered ricochets.
When untwisted
the poem empties out
unencumbered
& deaf to the multitude of yesterdays it's been
since your body left the room.